Nowadays, with the developments of science and technology, barcode printers or tag printers are widely used. For example, barcode printers or tag printers have various applications in medical industries, transportation industries, retail industries, logistics and warehousing industries, manufacturing industries, entertainment industries, service industries, government agencies, post offices, courier technologies or other industries. In other words, barcode printers or tag printers become indispensable products in modern daily lives.
The barcode printer or tag printer is a machine that uses print papers of specified size and material and prints out specified contents according to a default typesetting process. Generally, the barcode printers or tag printers are classified into two types, i.e., a direct thermal printing type and a thermal transfer printing type. Moreover, the barcode printers or tag printers use specially-designed print papers and ribbons and use printheads to print out characters or images. Moreover, the print paper has an adhesive part made of adhesive material. Through the adhesive part, the print paper can be attached on a designated object to indicate the content for identification. Moreover, depending on the applications, the barcode printers or tag printers are classified into fixed-type, desktop-type or portable-type barcode printers or tag printers.
For example, in a specimen sampling task of the medical industry, the sampling worker usually uses the tag printer to produce adhesive tags in order to clearly and quickly mark the sources and types of different specimens. Moreover, in post offices or courier industries, associated business also needs to produce tags. For example, the tags are attached on parcels or letters in order to indicate the information about the receivers. Moreover, for achieving the quick and clear marking purpose, tag printers are important to produce the bus tickets, entrances or number signs for the transportation industries, the service industries or the entertainment industries and important to produce the price tags for the selling commodities of the manufacturing industries or the retail industries.
Moreover, the produced tag has a barcode. For effectively reading the barcode, a barcode reader is cooperatively used. After the information of the barcode is read by the barcode reader according to an optical technology, the information of the barcode is transmitted to a computer system. On the other hand, the portable tag printer usually cooperates with a mobile electronic device such as a smart phone, a tablet computer or a personal digital assistant. The portable tag printer and the mobile electronic device are in wireless communication with each other according to a wireless communication protocol such as a radio frequency identification (RFID) protocol, a Bluetooth protocol, a Wi-Fi protocol (e.g., the Wi-Fi protocol complying with the IEEE 802.11 standard) or a ZigBee protocol (e.g., the ZigBee complying with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard). After a command is transmitted from the mobile electronic device to the portable tag printer, the desired tag is printed out.
As known, the cooperative barcode reader has certain volume or weight, and the barcode reader has to be lengthily and precisely aligned with the barcode according to the optical scanning method. Consequently, with increasing development of a wireless communication technology, a near field communication (NFC) technology is gradually valued. The NFC technology is based on a radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. In particular, the NFC technology is a short-distance and high-frequency wireless communication technology that enables mobile electronic devices to exchange data between each other in a contactless peer-to-peer manner. Conventionally, the NFC technology provides two reading modes, including an active reading mode and a passive reading mode. Moreover, the NFC technology enables connection and communication more conveniently and more quickly.
For example, the mobile electronic device with a NFC chip can be operated with an electronic wallet, a credit card, an access control card, a bus/metro ticket card or an entrance ticket. Moreover, the mobile electronic device with a NFC reader can read associated data from an identification tag that complies with a NFC standard.
FIG. 1 schematically illustrates the application of a NFC technology on a conventional tag printer. As shown in FIG. 1, an identification tag 11 is produced according to the NFC technology. Moreover, the identification tag 11 has associated information contents such as the product number, the product information, the patient name and the medical history data. Moreover, a mobile electronic device 12 comprises a reader or a writer (not shown) for reading or writing the identification tag 11. That is, the mobile electronic device 12 and the identification tag 11 can exchange data according to the wireless communication protocol of the NFC technology. Moreover, the mobile electronic device 12 can read the information contents of the identification tag 11 in an active reading mode. After the mobile electronic device 12 is in wireless communication with the tag printer 10, the mobile electronic device 12 can control the tag printer 10 to print out a new tag or the added information according information contents of the identification tag 11. The printed tag can be further checked or attached.
Moreover, the identification tag 11 can be installed in another electronic device (not shown). Consequently, these two electronic devices can exchange data between each other in the contactless peer-to-peer manner. Under this circumstance, the general barcode reader can be omitted from the architecture of FIG. 1.
However, in case that both of the tag printer and the mobile electronic device are simultaneously used, the burden on the user increases. Moreover, if the fixed-type tag printer or the desktop-type tag printer is employed or there is a long distance between the tag printer and the location where the mobile electronic device reads the identification tag, it is difficult to get the printed new tag. If the portable tag printer is employed and a lot of different kinds of tags are printed, some drawbacks still occur. For example, after the contactless reading and printing processes are performed many times, the user usually confuses and makes a mistake and wonders which printed new tags and which identification tags are in pairs.